The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

VI.
THE GREAT KHALIF.

MY readers may perhaps be disappointed that so far we have but few records of noble deeds or great wars, and that instead of individual heroes we have been chiefly interested in large movements of races and religions. We had, it is true, a stirring outset with Tārik and his Berbers, whose brilliant conquests are no more legendary than is the history of the nineteenth century. We had the great and decisive battle of Tours, but of this the details, which might have proved of surpassing interest, are wanting; and the other engagement with the Franks, the field of Roncesvalles, errs in the opposite direction, for it is overclouded with myth. Since that day, a hundred years have now passed, and we have come to the death of Eulogius and the consequent decline of the Christian martyrs; and in all that century we have been reading of nothing but the struggle between the different races and creeds that made up the mixed population of the Spanish peninsula. But after all, golden deeds are rare, and are too often the invention of poets, whose spiritual minds clothe with the attributes of ideal chivalry what are really the ordinary events of war; while the struggle of race with race and creed with creed is what the world has been incessantly witnessing ever since man came into existence. We must not allow ourselves to think that the history of these large movements is uninteresting because it has not the personal charm of individual acts of heroism. In the devotion of countless unnoticed men and women during the piteous epoch of martyrdom at Cordova there was perhaps more real heroism than in the impetuous deeds of chivalry displayed by rude warriors on the battle-field. It is much easier to be brave in hot blood than to endure the alarms and sufferings of long imprisonment, to look forward with undaunted courage to the day of execution, and keep a firm heart through it all. The Christian martyrs were misguided, they threw away their lives without cause; but their courage is as worthy of admiration as their wisdom is to be pitied. Flora was as real a heroine as if she had sacrificed herself for a worthy sake. Eulogius, with all his bigotry, was of the true hero's mould. And in all these great movements of race or faith there are numberless acts of devotion and fortitude which, though they may escape the eye of the historian, call for as much resolution and endurance as the most brilliant exploits of the soldier. It is often in the little acts of heroism that the hardest duties of mankind are found; and in the conflicts between large bodies of people there are endless opportunities for their exercise.

It is much easier to realize heroic character in a person than in a whole people or even a city; and we are now coming to the career of a man who approached as few have ever done the high ideal of kingly greatness. A great king is the result of a great need. When the nation is sore beset, when the times are full of presage of disaster, and ruin hangs ominously on the horizon; then the great king comes to rescue his people from danger, to restore order and well-being, and to reign over a realm once more made happy and prosperous by his efforts. The need of such a ruler was anxiously felt at the beginning of the tenth century in Spain. The excited conduct of the Christians of Cordova had been followed by a still more dangerous and widespread rebellion in the provinces. The throne was occupied by incapable sovereigns; for the energetic policy of Mundhir, who had succeeded his father Mohammed in 886, was arrested by his assassination in 888, and his brother Abdallah, who had instigated the murder, was incapable of dealing courageously with the numerous sources of danger which then menaced the kingdom. His policy was shifty and temporizing; he alternately tried the effects of force and conciliation, with the usual consequence that both policies failed; and he was personally so despicable, cruel, and vile, that all parties in his dominions seemed for once to be agreed in their detestation of him, and their resolve to cast off his rule. He had hardly been reigning three years when the greater part of Andalusia was virtually independent. All the various factions of the State were now again in active opposition to the central power. Every nobleman or chief, were he Arab, Berber, or Spaniard, seized the opportunity of a bad and weak sovereign, and general anarchy, to appropriate a portion of the land for his own exclusive benefit, and from behind his ramparts to defy the Sultan. The old Arab aristocracy, the descendants of the Arab tribes who completed the conquest of Spain, were few and greatly outnumbered by the other races; but though their weakness should have kept them loyal to the Arab kingdom of Cordova, they too turned against it, and established themselves in independent princedoms, especially at Seville, which now became a formidable rival to Cordova. In other cities, though the Arabs were not strong enough to break openly with the Sultan, they gave him but a nominal homage; and the governors of Lorca and Zaragoza were really quite independent of their feeble king. In no place, outside Cordova, where the mercenary guards of the Sultan compelled a certain outward submission, were the Arabs to be counted upon for the defence of the Omeyyad power.

The Berbers were more numerous than the Arabs, and at least equally disaffected. They had abandoned any pretence of submission to the Sultan's authority, and had returned to their old political system of clan government. The western provinces of Spain, such as Estremadura, and the south of Portugal, were now the independent possessions of the Berbers; and they also held various important posts, such as Jaen, in Andalusia itself. The Berber family of Dhu-n-Nun, consisting of the father Mūsa, "a great scoundrel and an abominable thief," and his three sons, who resembled him in their physical strength and their unrivalled brutality, carried fire and sword through the land, and burnt, sacked, and massacred wherever they went.

The Mohammedan Spaniards, who had put on something of Arab civilization along with their new faith, were by no means barbarians like the Berbers; but they were not the less hostile to the central power. The province of Algarve, at the south-west corner of the peninsula, was entirely in their power; and they held numerous independent cities and districts throughout Andalusia. Indeed all the most important cities were in secret or open revolt. Arab governors, Berber chiefs, Spanish renegades, alike joined in repudiating or disregarding the sovereign authority of Abdallah; and most powerful of all, Ibn-Hafsūn, a Christian, who had raised the mountaineers of the province of Elvira (Granada), reigned in perfect security in his rocky fastness, Bobastro, and gave laws to the regions around. Again and again had the Sultan attacked him, and each time suffered defeat; now he was disposed to try the ignominious policy of conciliation, only to find Ibn-Hafsūn quite ready to trick him at that. Murcia, the "land of Theodemir," was independent under a mild and cultivated renegade prince, who governed his subjects wisely, and was beloved by them; who was devoted to poetry, but did not neglect to keep up a considerable army, which included five thousand horsemen. Toledo was, as usual, in revolt, and nothing but the jealousies and divisions of the Christians of the north prevented them from reconquering their long lost territory. Split up as it was into numberless little seigniories, resembling rather the estates or counties of feudal barons than portions of a once powerful realm, Andalusia could have offered but an ill-directed resistance to a determined invader.[16]

There were of course some gleams of light amidst all this anarchy. We have said that the province of Murcia was ruled by an enlightened and benevolent prince. The lord of Cazlona was also distinguished for his patronage of poets and the arts; his halls were raised upon marble pillars, and the walls were encrusted with marble and gold; all that makes life enjoyable was to be found within his palace. Ibn-Hajjāj, too, the Arab king—for he was nothing less—of Seville, who had compelled the Sultan to come to terms with him and make him his friend, exercised his unbounded authority in the noblest manner. His city was admirably governed, order reigned there undisturbed, and evil-doers were sternly but justly punished. He kept his state like an emperor; five hundred cavaliers formed his escort, and his royal robe was of brocade, with his name and titles embroidered on it in gold thread. Kings from over the sea sent him presents: silken stuffs from Egypt, learned doctors of the law from Medina, and matchless singers from Baghdad. The beautiful lady "Moon," renowned for her lovely voice, her eloquence, and poetic fire, sang of him thus: "In all the west I find no right noble man save Ibrahim, but he is nobility itself. When one has known the delight of living with him, to dwell in any other land would be misery." The very poets of Cordova were attracted to his brilliant court, where they were sure of a princely welcome. Once only did a poet receive a cold greeting from Ibrahim the son of Hajjāj. This was one who thought to please the prince by reciting a scurrilous poem on the nobles of Cordova, to whom the ruler of Seville was not well disposed. "You are mistaken," was Ibn-Hajjāj's comment, "if you think that a man like myself can find any gratification in listening to these base calumnies."

Yet these occasional flashes of enlightenment cannot make amends for the general condition of anarchy to which Andalusia had become a prey, by the weakening of the central power, and the aggrandisement of countless petty rulers and brigand chiefs. The country was in a deplorable state, and Cordova itself, now threatened even with conquest at the hands of Ibn-Hafsūn and his bold mountaineers, was given over to mournful sadness. "Without being yet actually besieged, she was already suffering all the ills of beleaguerment." "Cordova," said the Arab historians, "was in the condition of a frontier town exposed to all the attacks of the enemy." Time after time the inhabitants were startled from their sleep, in the midst of night, by the cries of distress raised by the wretched peasants across the river, when the horsemen of Polei were setting the sword to their throats. "The State is menaced with total dissolution," wrote a contemporary witness; "disasters follow one another ceaselessly; thieving and pillaging go on; our wives and children are dragged into slavery." There were universal complaints of the Sultan's want of energy, of his weakness, and his baseness. The troops were grumbling because they were not paid. The provinces had stopped the supplies, and the treasury was empty.